The battle's done, and we kind of won, so we sound our victory cheer: where do we go from here?
... a blog by Marc Lynch

February 28, 2006

I was digging through some jihadi chatrooms this morning gathering examples and information for my talk on the various Islamist and Arab responses to the Danish cartoons. While I found plenty of that, I also found this thread, which had over 140,000 page views and over 250 responses - making it far and away the hottest thread of the last few days:

"Picture of a drunk woman drinking whiskey on a Saudi station under the guidance of the Minister of Information."

Saudi TV One aired a scene in a serial with a woman drinking whiskey. It may not be the end of civilization, but it's close, evidently. Certainly, it's evidence of the craven failure of the Minister of Information to protect impressionable, pious Saudis from such horrors (not the first, either: the post lists 26 (!) different offenses against Islam in the Saudi media under his watch). A crisis generating more page views and comments than anything related to Denmark, Iraq, al-Qaeda, or Hamas. Culture wars, jihadi branch.... and one more instance of the contentious relationship between the jihadis and their "mainstream media." You should see the three minute MPEG clip making the rounds of the jihadi boards of outtakes of unveiled female al-Arabiya news presenters flipping their hair, fixing their makeup, singing, and flirting with the camera... and the overheated denunciations of readers who evidently were so upset that they had to watch it at least three times...

February 27, 2006

For those who may be interested, I'm giving two public talks this week.

Tomorrow, here at Williams College, I'll be speaking to the International Studies Colloquium on "Rational Rage? The Arab Response to the Danish Cartoon Crisis." The talk will look in some detail at the evolution of the response to the cartoons in the Arab media, including television and the press, as well as the interventions by various Islamist actors (including Qaradawi, the "Ulema Petition", the Muslim Brotherhood, and radical groups) and states. It is in Weston 10, tomorrow (Tuesday), 2:45-4:00. (But frankly, if you can only attend one event on Tuesday, you should go see Betsy Kolbert talk about climate change. If you can attend two, come see me!)

On Wednesday, I'll be speaking to the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard on "Anti-Americanisms in the Arab World." The talk is based on my chapter in the volume on anti-Americanism edited by Peter Katzenstein and Robert Keohane, and is aimed at an academic audience. It will be in the Weatherhead Center from 2:00-3:30.

I look forward to seeing you there, if you're in the area. Blogging will likely be light for the next few days as I get these talks ready in addition to my normal teaching and administrative obligations.

February 24, 2006

A number of writers, including me, have pointed out that the trans-national Arab press and Arab television (including al-Jazeera and the other satellites) were behind the curve on the cartoons crisis. Once it exploded, many of them covered it heavily, even irresponsibly, fanning the flames with sensational coverage of the protests and demonstrations. But they seemed to have been taken as much by surprise as anyone else - they generally did not cover the issue heavily until after, not before, the protests exploded.

Since I'm working up a short paper on the subject I've been trying to gather slightly more systematic data to find out if it supports the general trend outlined above. This morning I went to the archives of two leading pan-Arab dailies to find out how they covered the cartoons. I chose al-Quds al-Arabi and al-Sharq al-Awsat, for several reasons. First, because the former represents the most "Arabist" of the pan-Arab dailies, with a generally anti-American, populist line, while the latter represents the most obviously Saudi-owned and controlled of the dailies, and these days has a self-declared "mission" of combatting Islamic extremism. And second, because they each maintain easily usable on-line archives! I looked at the front page and the editorial pages of each between January 25 (a week before the protests exploded) and February 10.

The results: Neither al-Quds al-Arabi nor al-Sharq al-Awsat had a single front page story about the cartoons prior to January 31. Al-Sharq al-Awsat had two opeds that week, one entitled "Don't boycott Danish products"; which is two more than al-Quds, whose essayists didn't pay the story any attention at all. Both ran their first stories on January 31: al-Sharq al-Awsat with a small story featuring the Danish apology and one editorial; al-Quds al-Arabi with a lead story about the boycott threats (and a picture of a sign in a Saudi store announcing Danish products were no longer being sold), a lead editorial, and several others.

Over the next week, the two papers diverged: al-Sharq al-Awsat ran no front page stories between February 1 and February 4, while al-Quds al-Arabi ran a sensational lead story with picture every day that week. Al-Sharq al-Awsat had a few editorials in that period, which tended towards the reflective ("what next?" or "the limits of freedom"). Al-Quds's front page featured al-Qaeda threatening Denmark, pictures of protestors, and "Muslims uniting in a Day of Rage". Its editorial page featured multipled essays and almost daily cartoons on the topic - including a fascinating one showing a protestor holding a sign declaring "boycott Danish products!" while American tanks passed unremarked between his legs.

February 5 and 6 finally saw al-Sharq al-Awsat cover the story on its front page, with the burning of the embassies in Beirut and Damascus; but after that the story largely disappeared again from its leads. The op-eds at this point began to focus heavily on the cartoons, with more than 15 essays from a wide range of writers appearing in a three day period (including pieces by Sadeq al-Mahdi, Tareq Ramadan, Fahmy Howeidy, Ghassan Imam, Mishari al-Zaydi, and others). At roughly the same time, oddly enough, al-Quds al-Arabi began to trail off in its coverage: from February 7 to February 11, the front page had either nothing or else a smaller story below the fold.

All of this supports the general descriptive point: for at least these two widely read Arab papers, the heavy coverage came after the crisis exploded, not before. They fanned the fire but didn't light it. The real driving force behind the protests came from sub-public forms
of communication - internet forums, email, mosques, cassette sermons,
pamphlets and other forms circulating beneath the surface of the mass
media. I suspect, but don't yet have evidence, that tabloids in countries featuring a yellow press (like Egypt) probably were on the story earlier too.

Once the protests exploded, on the other hand, the mass media picked them up and pushed the story, as their coverage of angry protests fueled emotional outrage elsewhere and exacerbated the tensions. After a while, though, more thoughtful commentary started to creep in, on talk show debates and on the editorial pages, with the escalating violence of the protests in particular sparking some serious reflection (Fahmy Howeidy, for instance, went from a February 11 column on "the lessons of the European assault on the Prophet" to an important February 15 column urging Muslims to "open the doors to civil jihad" rather than a violent one). Which only reinforces my sense that it's better to have such
issues openly debated on mass media like satellite television, where
multiple perspectives thrash it out no matter how uncomfortable, rather
than relegating them to sub-public sites where like-minded extremists
congregate.

Even as the traditional, state-backed papers try to liven up
coverage to compete, the upstart dailies still stand out. One day this
week, for example, al Ahram, the largest and most venerable of the
old-guard papers, ran front-page items on a soccer match, a new
government hot line for bird-flu cases, Mubarak meeting with his
Cabinet, and Mubarak's wife announcing the theme of her annual
motherhood conference.

Al Misri al Youm, by contrast, ran a front page full of local
news about a political party in disarray, judges fighting for more
independence, Islamists suggesting donations to the cash-strapped
Palestinian militant group Hamas, and an exclusive investigation into
corruption at the agriculture ministry.

Like al-Ghad in Jordan, al-Masry al-Yom is trying to be a new kind of Arab newspaper, with an emphasis on professional journalism and a stable of smart, liberal-minded columnists. I've been arguing in every forum lately that Arab satellite television has pretty much reached its limits in terms of promoting democratic reforms, and that further progress in individual Arab countries depends heavily on the emergence of strong, critical, and independent local media. That remains the biggest weakness of the Arab media scene, but papers like those two (and a few others) offer glimmers of hope. Now, MY needs to get an on-line edition, like al-Ghad's (according to Issandr el-Amrani, they are now experimenting with one, which can be found here).

February 23, 2006

On last Saturday's episode of "Behind the News," al-Jazeera discussed Donald Rumsfeld's speech at the Council on Foreign Relations about the media. Under the title "American backwardness in the media war against al-Qaeda," the show invited the able Arabic speaking American diplomat Alberto Fernandez (who evidently was in town along with Karen Hughes), the Washington based Usama Abu Rashid (who I don't know anything about), and the Egyptian Kefaya activist Abd al-Halim Qandil to discuss the reasons for America's failures in the media wars - a topic which must have been extremely popular in the al-Jazeera editorial room!

The program began with a clip from Rumsfeld's speech, and was framed around two questions: why does Rumsfeld think that America is failing in the media realm, and does Washington understand the real reasons for its failures?

Alberto Fernandez (State Department) argued that Rumsfeld's remarks should be understood as primarily for local consumption, and as directed more towards the Defense Department's efforts than towards America's overall media efforts. Jumana al-Namour, the host, was skeptical: isn't it a bit strange, she asked, that a speech for local consumption would mainly be about efforts directed towards the Arab and Islamic media? Fernandez tried to argue that it was really about the image of the American armed services, pointing to how the Abu Ghraib scandal had undermined American military missions in Iraq.

That isn't really how I heard Rumsfeld's speech, I have to say - it seemed much broader in its scope than just the military side. But thinking about it, I can understand this interpretation: from an inside the beltway perspective, Rumsfeld's speech wasn't as much an attack on the media or a creative rethinking of American information efforts as it was a broadside attack on Karen Hughes. Since Hughes came on board, Fernandez's office has worked to vastly expand the American official presence on the Arab satellite TV stations. Rumsfeld's office, I gather (with his new Public Affairs Under-Secretary Dorrance Smith, who thinks that the media as a whole, and al-Jazeera specifically, is in bed with terrorists), is deeply hostile towards Hughes's outreach to al-Jazeera and to her public diplomacy operation. Rumsfeld's dismissal of American media efforts and argument to increase the role of the Defense Department in those efforts might well have been a public escalation of bureaucratic warfare - a hypothesis reinforced by the subsequent appearance of a column by their ever-loyal flack Max Boot decrying the State Department's public diplomacy efforts and praising those of Defense.

The rest of the program was actually a bit disappointing. Usama Abu Rashid argued that the real context of Rumsfeld's speech was the widespread perception that the US faced a crisis with Arab and Muslim public opinion that existing efforts such as al-Hurra and Radio Sawa couldn't meet. He noted a report issued this month by advisers to the Pentagon which had argued that the coming battle would largely be decided in the media. But, he argued, the real problem was policy, and no media efforts or Karen Hughes led public diplomacy would allow the US to improve the image of policies that the Arab and Muslim world viewed as unjust and biased. Qandil then said that Rumsfeld's remarks were ridiculous, and agreed that the problem wasn't the marketing of the product (American foreign policy) but the product itself. Which then provided the cue for leveling a series of attacks on American foreign policy. The truth, he said, was against America so any attempt to reveal the truth would only hurt America. Qandil said that frustration with America's inability to win in Iraq lay behind Rumsfeld's speech, with the focus on the media being an attempt to shift to a domain in which America might be able to win. But, Qandil said, it couldn't.

Fernandez calmly replied that, with respect to his friends, that they were offering superficial analysis because in truth we really are talking about al-Qaeda. As for the "product", Alberto said that the product America was selling was freedom and reform. Jumana then asked him again why, then, Rumsfeld spoke of a media failure? Alberto dodged the question, pushing on the theme that America's advocacy of reform responded to the voices of reformers in the region, that America listened every day to the voices talking about freedom and reform and that this had therefore become a big part of American policy in the region. That's a good line of argument to take on al-Jazeera in general I'd say, but it didn't respond to the question. So Jumana said, but you didn't answer my question, and then asked it again. So Alberto said again that maybe Rumsfeld was just talking about the Defense Department... at which point Jumana said that maybe Alberto kept saying that because he was coming from the State Department, and then they went to commercial.

After the break, more of the same. Abu Rashid repeated the point about the public opinion polls showing hostility to the United States. Qandil repeated the point about the failure of American efforts, pointing out that the reason al-Hurra and Sawa failed was that they had no credibility - if they told the truth, to gain credibility, the truth would hurt America so they couldn't tell the truth. Alberto almost lost it there, but he's a cool customer and did a decent job staying on message. He argued that al-Qaeda represented a marginal group but capitalized on the feelings of resentment and hatred and polarization in society, and that America and the world needed to promote mutual tolerance and better living conditions in order to neutralize al-Qaeda. When Jumana asked him what he thought about the Defense Department playing a bigger role in public diplomacy, Alberto said that he thought that the military should stick to fighting battles. I'd have to agree.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed with the show because it didn't really get into the questions I'd like to see discussed - a lot of it was kind of the same old same old (better public diplomacy or changing policy? Is America serious about promoting reform?) rather than a fresh look at America's media efforts. I'd imagine that Alberto came away from the show a bit frustrated, though I think that it's incredibly important that people like him are there on al-Jazeera even if they don't have the best time at it (though he was sitting in the studio across from Jumana, so how bad could it have really been?). To me, the most interesting part was what it seemed to reveal about State-Defense competition over public diplomacy - which might not be of much interest to al-Jazeera's viewers, but should be to public diplomacy observers. Be curious to know what other PD folks think.

The other day, I was asked what the Arab media is saying about the controversy surrounding Dubai and ports. Personally, I think a lot of the response - they're Arabs - has been pretty unwarranted, if not offensive. If Bush or others in the administration circumvented legal procedures, hold them accountable on that; if it really compromises port security then we should know (not that ignoring port security would be anything new, as Steve Flynn has been complaining for years now, but the ownership of the port agencies is the least of the problems). But who cares what I think? What about the Arab media debates?

So I spent a couple of hours looking through newspapers and various websites and came back with remarkably little. It just doesn't really seem to have make much of an impact - drowned out by the cartoons, Hamas, and now the sectarian violence in Iraq. It's reported briefly now and then, but primarily as a problem for Bush. Al-Sharq al-Awsat leads with how it "ignites a crisis... mutual accusations between Bush and his opponents." Al-Hayat leads with the conflict between Bush's veto threat and the UAE's statement of its commitment to "fight terrorism", along with Arab Americans complaining of racism. Al-Jazeera has some news items about it, but to my knowledge hasn't done any talk shows on the topic - suggesting that it doesn't rank up there as a top issue - and its current story on the website focuses on Bush's reassurances to the UAE (with a particularly unflattering picture of Condi, I might add). It isn't one of al-Arabiya's front page stories right now. Even in the UAE papers (I looked al-Khaleej, al-Bayan, and a couple of others) the most I could find were small, below the fold news reports - not column after column of fulminating editorials, not banner headlines.

I'd take a couple of things away from this relatively low key response in the Arab media I've seen (and anyone who saw different coverage in their local media should feel free to let me know). It really just seems to be drowned out by the more pressing regional issues - Iraq, Hamas, the cartoons dominate the space right now. In a slower news week, maybe it would have gotten more play. And it's very possible that the story will get more play as it develops. But for now, it seems to be that the Arab media is largely passing up on the chance to whip up anger over a story which kind of lends itself to it. And that's a non-barking dog which might be significant. In recent years (especially after 9/11 and accelerating through 2002-2003) Arab media would often lavish attention on relatively small stories which made the US look bad, to the consternation of American officials. This time, they don't seem to be doing so. Whether that's because of general political considerations, Karen Hughes' outreach to al-Jazeera and the Arab media, market competition considerations, just a crowded news agenda, or something else entirely - and whether it will continue - remains an open question.

UPDATE: the Washington Post's roundup of the international media claims that "In the Arab online media, the furor in the United States over the
Bush administration's decision to allow a Persian Gulf firm to manage
several U.S. ports is seen almost unanimously as confirmation of
American "bigotry" against Muslims." But all of his references are to English language newspapers (the Gulf Times, the Arab News, the Gulf Today) - which really aren't representative of the "Arab media", or widely read among Arab publics, and are often directed more to an expat and Western audience. So rather misleading roundup.

February 22, 2006

Just got back from a very interesting breakfast with the UK-based Iraqi Jewish sociologist Sami Zubaida, who was in town to talk about the Iraqi Jewish experience. The most interesting part of his talk for me was his explanations of why Iraqi Jews featured so prominently in instrumental music, as well as his general discussion of their role in journalism and publishing in the early 20th century. Also, some fascinating points about Iraqi cuisine which I can't remember well enough to even attempt to reproduce here.

Over breakfast, we talked about all the issues you'd expect. I was pleasantly surprised that his view of Arab satellite TV roughly coincided with the argument in my book - that it has produced a historically unique Arab common space for political argument, even if there is no consensus and the political project of pan-Arabism is dead. We largely agreed on the cartoons crisis, as well, though since it was a casual breakfast I'm obviously not going to quote anything that he said on that contentious topic. We didn't agree on everything, don't worry - what a boring conversation that would have been!

The author, Fedwa al-Dabbagh, surveys a number of booksellers in central Amman and argues that what what people are really buying has very little resemblance to the official line. As she wanders through the markets, the voices of Nancy Ajram and Elissa compete with tapes full of gunshots and explosions and exhortations to join the jihad in Palestine and Iraq. She points out - quite accurately, based on my personal experience - that most of the bookstores' sales are of the "under the counter" variety: jihadi and takfiri texts officially banned, but easily obtainable (Abdullah Azzam remains a particular favorite). For a dinar, she writes, you can easily get videos of bloody attacks against Israel produced by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or against Americans in Iraq, or beheading videos, or of the devastation of Fallujah in April 2004. That, and pornography.

All of this, it's crucial to note, takes place outside of formal channels, outside the licensed print media or television - more resembling what can be found on the internet than what can be found on al-Jazeera. She interviews one book-seller (Ahmed) who says that more than a year ago the authorities banned him from selling jihadi videos or tapes, and whose stall is the target of frequent raids. Nevertheless, he claims to have daily sales of some 200 JD ($280), primarily from Islamist and jihadi materials. "Enlightened" books don't do very well.

Another more established book-seller says that his clientele is older (over 25) and buys a wider range of books. He mentions "Binat al-Riyadh" (the controversial book about young Saudi women), the Arabic translation of the Da Vinci Code, and Yasri Hussein's "Reason, al-Salafiya, and Freedom" as particular best-sellers. But, he says, since the 2003 Gulf war he has seen much greater acceptance for religious books and books about the last days.

Yet another book-stall operator says that his best sales are of novels and poems (Nizar Qabbani, Amin Malouf) and singers like Nancy Ajram and Amr Diab, as well as preachers like Sami Youssef.

The implication of the article is that the official crackdown on "takfiri thought" by the Jordanian authorities, announced after the November hotel bombings - which mainly concentrates on the official and licensed media - won't accomplish much, since the material still circulates freely in popular markets. The official list of banned books means little, it would seem.

Jordanian readers: does Dabbagh's account of the current state of Amman's booksellers ring true to you? The easy availability of the under the counter stuff, the juxtaposition of Nancy Ajram and Abdullah Azzam - that all fits with my experience in years past, but I wonder if you find that things have changed significantly since November?